Winter

The wind has come to the Delta, fierce, unrelenting, and cold.  It coils itself around my house and shakes until the trailer rattles.  Inside, the power holds but I have my phone on its charger and a flashlight at hand.

I pick my way across the stretch of mud between my car and the pavers after work.  All the while, the air dances and the rain keeps time.  Winter unfolds.  I feel it in my bones.   Though snow does not venture here, news of blizzards in the nearby Sierras reminds me of the season’s baser self.

After dinner at a neighbor’s house last evening, I came back to Angel’s Haven in the pitch black of the island in sleep.  The house seemed warm, but by morning the butter had grown cold  in its dish on the counter.  I moved around with the clumsy grace of a land-dweller in the timid perch of my tiny house on wheels.  But I notice that each day my feet grow more sure, and my pace more steady.  I do not lament the arrival of this chilly month — none of it, not the long rise of the Delta winds nor the steady beat of the storm on my roof.

It’s the sixteenth day of the sixty-first month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

 

Emmylou Harris, “Before Believing”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *